My Fellow Geeks Will Appreciate This....

Most people who know me know that much of my spiritual and theological undergirding is the direct result of the late Bishop Thomas Lanier Hoyt, Jr.  I’ve written and spoken extensively about his influence on my life, about him taking time with the weird little smart kid, about him answering all my ridiculous 10 year old questions (with examples I would remember for the rest of my life), about him following and looking after me even when I’d gone astray, and about how, upon my return to the fold, he willingly wrote a recommendation for me to attend seminary (I used him as a personal reference, not yet realizing his academic stature).  He’s always been there to encourage and shape me, both spiritually and intellectually.

So I go to seminary and I do ok.  My final GPA of 3.9 was not too shabby, especially considering it included a B+ in Hebrew.  Much more significant than my grade point average, though, were my Church History professor, Dale Irvin, and picture of a jade stele (the Nestorian Stele), which showed evidence of Christianity in China way back in the 700s.  The idea that Christianity was being embraced by the Chinese that far back (actively embraced, not a Chinese parroting of a Eurocentric story in English) – the concept was revolutionary to my mind, as was the global nature of Christianity SINCE ITS INCEPTION.  Prior to that awakening, I’d suffered from the misperception that Christianity was a religion of the West; I can’t even describe my joy in realizing that Christ really was a Christ for ALL People – and always had been!

So this Church History professor worked with me and suggested I pursue a Ph.D.  I remember this quite vividly, as it was one of few times I have intentionally been rude to a professor:  without a word of response, I turned my back and walked out of his class when he said it. Still, he labored with me, nudged me, and encouraged me.  Email was in its infancy, and we spent hours in this new medium, trading emails with all sorts of philosophical and theological conversations.  He was like mind candy!!  He introduced a group of us students to the American Academy of Religion, and in 2003 invited me to join an international group of scholars who came together to form a new, non-Eurocentric telling of the story of the Christian Movement.  This HWCM (History of the World Christian Movement) group collaborated around the country and around the world (that was how I first saw Alaska, on a trip to Malaysia in 2004).  Together the HWCM group developed a new way of telling the Christian story.  Within 10 years it become the norm for teaching church history, and through Dale, I was part of it!!  I remember how terrified I was on my first trip down to Princeton (“I’ve gotta go to a meeting with all those smart people!!”).  My fears were quickly allayed, and I actually got to meet, have personal conversations with, and count as friends some amazing scholars from all around the globe.

Fast forward a decade.  After many discussions with Bishop Hoyt regarding Church, Academy, the need to publish, and the false construct of tension between faith and intellect; and after years of serving as a teaching assistant and research fellow with Dale and in the Center for World Religion at New York Theological Seminary, I’m considering a Ph.D.  Dale suggests I talk to David, one of the members of the HWCM group.  “Oh, yes,” David responds.  “I was actually thinking of contacting you to see if you’d be interested in helping me research (the reader for HWCM) Volume 2.”  Now that right there is enough to make me do backflips, but as I was considering the opportunity, I looked up Dave’s credentials.  It appears he was recently elevated to Bishop in the denomination headed up by one of Bishop Hoyt’s classmates, Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr.  Though I still can’t say Bishop Blake’s name without remembering how I met him at Bishop Hoyt’s sickbed, I thought on the connection and said to myself, “Wow!!” Bishop Hoyt would be really happy at this turn of events!”

And then I looked at David’s credentials a bit more, realizing that not only did Bishop Hoyt’s former classmate appoint him chair of their denomination’s Commission on Education, and not only did he serve on the National Council of Church’s Faith and Order commission like Bishop Hoyt did, but on his CV, he actually lists participation in a research project directed by Bishop Hoyt!!

I think I started dancing then.  I’m excited and grateful to have had my theological groundwork laid by the late Bishop Thomas Lanier Hoyt, Jr.  I’m excited and grateful that his recommendation helped get me into New York Theological Seminary, where I met Dale, who has continued to nudge and nurture and prune and push me. I’m ecstatic when I think about the fact that a casual comment from Dale led me to David, who is my friend and, whether or not we move forward on this project, completes the circle of Bishop Hoyt’s influence not just upon my personal life, but upon my spiritual and intellectual formation.

That is enough, but I’m bi(or tri)vocational.  My secular life involves providing housing and services for people with special needs.  Presently my Board and I are looking at three separate possibilities, any one of which would enable us to expand -- to multiply --  our services beyond the 71 families and 145 single adults we currently serve. 

I’m not sure words can do this justice.  I’m wandering around, doing oddball me, and about a week after wrestling with some issues and re-declaring to God that I’d do whatever God decided (honest, God.  I’ll be obedient this time...), all these connections started coming together.  They all sit at the intersection of faith and intellect, or of church and academy, or at the nexus of intellectual exploration and practical application.  Separately or together they seem, in my life anyway, to be evidence of the fact that God continues to smile on me, yes, and that Bishop Hoyt still has his eye on me.  Together they are still looking out for me, and still expecting great things from me.  That realization has me wanting to run and jump and scream and shout.  It gives me gratitude that is inexpressible.

In Sickness and In Health

So my lungs are on fire, it hurts to breathe, and the only way I can avoid being a mouth-breather is to keep a supply of wasabi peas nearby.  I opened my mouth to speak this morning and some guy’s gravelly voice came out.  Most cold medications, even in the correct dosage, make me high; the only thing that worked was Buckley’s and they’ve taken it off the market.  So I’m walking around with wasabi peas.

In general, I don’t do “sick.”  There was the bout with cancer over a decade ago, and I remember saying then “but I don’t even catch colds!”  I might get the sniffles if I don’t fully dry my hair after a swim, and lying down with a wet head when the temperature is under 40 gives me a kinda sore throat.  But all of that is dis-ease, the state of one’s body being out of its natural rhythm.  It does not escape me that the current dis-ease that’s come upon me is the direct result of that:  I haven’t been working out consistently, and have pretty much abandoned my largely plant-based, generally healthy diet for the typical American suicide food. 

I want to be clear here:  when I'm eating and exercising properly, I can swim 3-4 nights a week, go out into freezing weather with my wet hair stuffed under a cap, and the most that happens is I get the sniffles.  I fail to work out and eat properly for about a month, and suddenly I can't breathe through my nose, my lungs are on fire, I'm tired and achy and alternating sweats with chills.... You do the math.

Because I know what I’ve gotta do.  As a matter of fact, the first thing I did today was to go on my neighborhood stroll – I’d had a 1 pm meeting which needed to be rescheduled, then had like four mini-meetings before I got out of the house.  During my two mile stroll, I had a couple more, then I forced myself to make the rounds of some of my buildings, and now I’m in the office.  Still can’t breathe properly, but getting the body back into its natural function of movement is good.

Our organization provides services to people with mental, physical, emotional, and/or health challenges, and we serve a population that traditionally has had very limited access to healthcare.  I’m painfully aware of how dis-ease and unhealthy living impact quality and quantity of life.  No matter how sick we may be, we are in these earthen vessels, these temples of the soul, that are our bodies.  If we were to treat them (both our bodies and our souls) with the same care and reverence with which we treat, for example, our homes or our physical possessions, I can’t help but believe this world would be a better place.  If I’m eating toxic food every day, if I’m not moving my body to circulate the toxins of this industrial world out of that body, then the toxins remain and can’t help but manifest themselves in my body and, more often than not, in my spirit.

(As a side note, it just kills me to worship/fellowship/embrace a culture that says it loves God but makes no allowances for the wellbeing of the temples that house God’s Spirit among individuals.  But I’ve always been a little weird.)

I see a lot of sickness, a lot of dis-ease, in the physical and spiritual realms, all around me.  It’s been my privilege to know, work with, and/or be exposed to some visionaries who routinely lead their congregations in acts of prayer and fasting; my thought is that this should be a regular, routine, proactive measure for EVERYONE.  In the late 70s, I trained as a martial artist.  The focus was on wholistic living, integration of mind, body, and spirit.  While I lacked sufficient discipline to completely embrace the lifestyle forever, some things did stick.  I learned way back then that: human anatomy isn’t really designed for consumption or digestion of animal products; and regular fasting (2-3  days a month) can have unbelievable metabolic benefits.  Again, I did not embrace the lifestyle completely;  I’m an unapologetic omnivore, but routinely spend from 30-365 day periods abstaining from meat.  Fasting one day a month is no longer something about which I’m intentional; my body has gotten to the point where there are intervals when it simply doesn’t want food.  Thankfully, my body also knows what foods it needs, and I’ve learned that when I have odd cravings, it’s likely because there’s some sort of deficiency in my body.

Don’t get me wrong.   I’m a big believer in Western medicine.  I just think that when it’s laid atop a foundation of proper movement and healthy eating, that it becomes more effective.  Given the many unhealthy behaviors in which I’ve engaged over the years (routinely ceasing food intake, for instance, did not stop me from becoming morbidly obese), I cannot help but believe that this foundation of regularly cleansing my insides played some part in our being able to successfully fight off the cancer that later attacked.  I'm not saying wholistic living cures cancer. I'm saying that having developed a healthy baseline and adhering to it for years quite possibly made the difference between life and death, EVEN THOUGH I TEMPORARILY ABANDONED IT.

So this has kinda wandered around, but the bottom line is that we all get one body, and we get to determine how we use it.  Not everyone is physically able to do a five-mile walk, but each of us is able to challenge ourselves, to push past what we thought were our limits, and to journey on towards wholeness, and to a spiritual and physical stability that abides with us, in sickness and in health.

Round Midnite

After the fact, I learned there’d been a prayer vigil at the site, PSA 5, which services NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) buildings in a number of precincts, including the one where I live.  It was round midnite when I found myself at the site, and neighborhood mourners still straggled by –  a group of friends, possibly off duty police officers, shouted their goodbyes while a couple of – teens? Millenials?  Staggered up to the makeshift memorial.  Uniformed police officers hovered nearby and in pairs up and down the block; indeed, the police presence seemed greater than usual this evening, even taking into account the fact that it was right around shift-change time.

As we approached the memorial, me behind them, the young men got quiet. They paid their respects, and were refreshingly polite when they realized I was behind them, maneuvering themselves so that I could see the memorial as well.  Nestled into a triangular alcove created by the angle of the building and the roof, the makeshift memorial had sprung up, anchored on one end by Pat Lynch and the PBA’s huge-bordering-on-ostentatious badge-shaped floral arrangement, and tapering off on the other side to an end-of-watch poster featuring a white angel, the NYPD flag and shield, and murdered officer Randolph Holder’s name, badge number, and EOW date.

I felt compelled to pay my respects there tonight.  This man, whose skin happened to be black, was murdered because he, like his father and grandfather before him, chose to wear blue.  This man was Police Officer Randolph Holder, Jr., who was murdered by someone whose name I neither know nor care to mention, on Tuesday, October 20, 2015. 

So it was around midnight that I was there, wrestling with my own grief and the grief of the entire city.  Earlier I’d seen Pat Lynch,  the PBA president, on TV but muted it.  I can barely stand to hear what is invariably his lambastic hyperbole.  I found myself wanting to speak to him, though. In my imaginary monologue, I'd say something like:

“Yes, Pat, Blue Lives Matter, just like Black Lives Matter.  Can you see how we all mourn with you when a police officer is murdered at the hands of someone whose skin is black or brown? It’s a tragedy, and we grieve with you.  When I look at the perp's face and skin, I don’t know if he would self-identify as black, Hispanic, Caribbean, or what – I know I'd identify him as a murderer. I can't help but wonder why it's so hard for you to grieve with civilians when a murderer, who happens to be wearing blue, takes the life of an innocent person whose skin is black or brown?  If you really believe that ALL lives matter, the grief would work both ways, wouldn’t it?  I don't see a potential bad cop every time I see someone in blue;  why must you see a potential criminal every time you see someone whose skin is black or brown?  There have been 101 Human Line of Duty deaths in 2015 and 25 Canine Line of Duty deaths; there have been 959 civilians killed by police in that same time period.  Y'all are killing us at about 10 times the rate that your brothers are being killed.  Why can't you understand the grief and outrage of civilians? We feel the same pain you do; why can't you feel our pain, too?  And yes, it's still important to tell you that Black Lives Matter so you don't treat us all the way you treated James Blake.  And countless, unreported others.”

But this isn’t about Pat Lynch, because I don’t believe he possesses the intellectual nor the introspective capacity to come to anything like that conclusion.  In his mind, Blue will always be right, and black and brown will always equate to suspicious and unworthy of the benefit of the doubt.  Randolph Holder was murdered because of the color of his uniform, because of his profession.  That is just as much a travesty of justice as it is to murder someone because of the color of their skin, but Pat Lynch will only see the travesty of justice when it is regarding those who wear the colors he wears.

So enough about Pat Lynch.  I went to the memorial around midnight, and I noticed young boys who, in other circumstances, might likely be profiled by the police, stop to pay their respects at the memorial to a murdered officer.  I was reminded of how Paul and Silas were in jail when around midnight there was a great earthquake and their shackles were released. 

What if the good that comes out of Officer Holder’s murder is an earthquake of consciousness, an earthquake of understanding, an earthquake of respect? What if, in the wake of Officer Holder’s murder, we could be released from the shackles that bind us to our preconceived notions which in turn keep us locked into cells of separation?  What if we could all experience freedom without having to worry about our lives being taken because of the color of our skin or the color of our uniforms?

In the Book of Acts, after the earthquake Round Midnight, people experienced physical freedom, and some who had been bound by the need to control others experienced a spiritual awakening leading them a new spiritual freedom in Christ.

My prayer is that the things I saw Round Midnight tonight will lead to a great shaking – an earthquake of sorts – that will position all God’s people to relate to one another in love while seeking the very Face of God.

Miracles Happen Round Midnight.  I’m waiting on it.

With Gratitude to the Memory of

PO Randolph Holder, Jr.

Badge#13340

EOW 10.20.15

Let's Not Let His Death Be In Vain.

Overpowered by Funk

So it felt really good to be back in the gym and the pool. I’d been out for maybe a couple of weeks, which followed a couple of erratic weeks.  I like maintaining consistency in my workouts – it’s the only “me” time I really get, and the effort of pushing my body to and beyond its limits is a great way to free the mind.

So tonight I found myself struggling because I’d been away for so long.  After age 40, it’s normal to lose about 1%/year of your lean muscle mass (though not, apparently, of your fat…).  I first saw a deterioration in lean muscle mass last year at age 58, and I’m determined to reverse it, so any difficulty swinging weights after a break really concerns me.  Then to make matters worse, somebody was really funky.  Not just normal gym sour sweaty funk, but that nose-curdling BO that comes when someone has had a major deodorant fail.  We swing bells in a small enclosed space with no ventilation (they have fans, but because we sweat so much, nobody likes to use them), I’m working hard and this person is imitating a skunk.  I found myself getting really mad, because the smell prevented me from focusing on my workout.  It’s a gym.  It’s a late night kettlebell class, so there’s lots of guys and lots of people who have already worked out for a few hours.  We’re used to stinky.  This was out of the ordinary, the kind of stink that just hunts you down, overpowers you and suffocates you. 

So I’m mad, and then it occurred to me that this stink is just like sin.  Sometimes other people’s sin is so stinky, so offensive to us, that it seems to pervade our very being.  But we’re not in this world to judge other people’s sin any more than I’m in a gym to evaluate another person’s funk.  I go to the gym to work out, not to smell people.  I suppose I could have tried to do like I do when I pass by garbage, and either mouth breathe or blow your own air into your nose, but instead I just focused on the reason I was there.  I tried to squat a little deeper and swing a little higher.  Before long, I was so busy having my butt kicked by my own routine that I didn’t have time to be bothered by the overpowering funk.  Yes, it was still there; whenever we took a water break or did partner work I could certainly smell it.  But when I kept myself busy doing what I was spozed to do, it didn’t bother me so much – it didn’t have quite so much power over me.

We live in a world where everything with which we don’t agree is either theologically anathema or legally actionable. Everything with which we don’t agree is like that overpowering funk, and its effects upon us seem to have no end.  Perhaps if we focused on ourselves a bit more (or since I’m Methodist, I’ll suggest JW’s three simple rules: Do No Harm; Do Good; and Stay In Love with God) – maybe if we focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, maybe other people’s funk wouldn’t overpower us.  And maybe, just maybe, if we all focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, not only would the funk not overpower us, but maybe we’d discover – new deodorants, new methods of hygiene, and who knows what else?  But we can’t let the funkiness of sin (or any other funkiness) overpower us and render us ineffective. Even in the face of seemingly overpowering funk, we have to find a way to funktion.

WHY do I keep DOING this?!?!?

I woke up this morning wondering WHY do I keep doing this?

They say insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results.  I feel like I must be insane to keep coming into this place day after day, doing what I’m doing. I feel like a puppet of the governmental agencies that fund us.

But feelings are just that.  Feelings.  They're not facts.  I am immediately reminded that not only the wellbeing, but the very lives of 145 individuals with special needs, 30 employees, and 71 families – the lives of these people is dependent on me doing my job.  When I started this job, and at various times during my tenure here, their future has seemed somewhere between murky and downright dark.  While no one can actually see the future, we can see several paths, all of which seem considerably brighter now.  Even as I sit here writing this, we are presented with an opportunity to possibly expand our scope of services to include something new and novel for an additional population:  our children.

So.  I’m so tired that I’m in my office in shorts, a fluorescent orange shirt, and purple, blue, and lime green socks.  I’m wearing this mostly because that’s what’s clean and I haven’t had time to do laundry.  As I look at my life, the numbers say I could retire now.  Possibly.  I’d probably have to sell some property and give up the dream of being a snowbird; I could still travel (some), but probably wouldn’t have an automobile to return to.  But I wouldn’t have to get up and be so tired that I’m wearing a bright orange shirt, khaki shorts, and purple, blue and green socks to work, either.  Matter of fact, if I were to go ahead and retire, laying on the beach would actually be a cost-saving measure.  So why don’t I do it?  Why DO I keep doing this? 

One of the first years I was here, we hosted  a block party.  I wanted to have the Black Cowboys and pony rides, because I figured that many of the urban kids we serve would never get a chance to see livestock up close.  We ended up offering pony rides (free, of course!).  It was a tremendous hit, and we’ve done it every year since.  A week or so ago,  I was driving through an economically challenged neighborhood in another boro.  What did I see?  Kiddies riding horsies! I’ve lived around that neighborhood for 30 years and had never seen anyone offering horsie rides.  I don’t know if it’s a direct result of the work we did;  I know we do some transformative work, we help make people’s lives better, and so even though it feels like we’re doing the same thing over and over again, we are, slowly, getting results.  

Every year we take a few dozen adults with special needs to the State Capitol, arrange meetings with legislators, then empower and encourage them to advocate for themselves and their needs.  We make sure they have the necessary resources to get out and vote.  Later this year, we expect to take a similar number on a trip to Washington, DC, so they can see the place where the highest level of our government functions.  These same people, without us, could very likely be sleeping on the trains or on church steps. Instead, as much as possible, we are offering them pathways back to fully appropriate housing.

So I guess that’s why I keep doing this.  It’s not always my pleasure – some people are mean, some are vindictive, some seem  just plain crazy (and I'm talking about the staff, not the populations we serve!); the work is fairly tedious, usually thankless, and a number of people seem to think that generating stress will produce their desired results (hint:  it usually has the opposite effect).  But at the end of the day, when I do my job, people’s lives are positively impacted, and when I do my job well, the quality of their lives is enhanced.  Reason enough, I think, to make it in to work one more day.

Forgiveness? What About You?

Not a lot about modern society (except perhaps its apparent impending demise) genuinely grieves me; a trend in responses to the Charleston Massacre has done that.  Every day I see people – Christians, Pastors, Academics, Intellectuals, and many who fit into none of the above categories – condemning the families of the Emmanuel Nine.  I’ve heard people call them names, say they were in denial, and say they hadn’t properly processed their grief.

I’m grateful to my friend, neighbor, and colaborer in Christ, Rev. Jose Humphries, for helping me find my voice on this.  As much as I love to write, there is much to be said for verbal exchange.   As we chatted today, we acknowledged that, thankfully, neither of us has ever been in the position of the families of those massacred.  We can’t know how we would behave.  I cannot find it in myself to begin to dictate, define, or describe what might be appropriate behavior in such a situation. 

Much is being made of their acts of forgiveness.  Somehow it seems these acts of forgiveness are being co-opted by the talking head du jour as some sort of symbolic statement on how people of color should respond to tragedy.  No mention is made of the fact that people of color have had to develop superhuman capacities for forgiveness and an otherworldly reliance on the Divine simply to endure their physical journey in an atmosphere of systemic oppression.  No, no mention is made of that. In my opinion, failure to acknowledge that fact is a reflection on the commentators and a reflection of the dominant culture.  It takes nothing away from the injured people’s need, ability, and spiritual desire to free themselves from the ravages of unforgiveness.

But somehow it seems those who would comment are conflating and/or equating the spiritual practices of those who would forgive with the transgressions of those who continue to inflict pain and cause havoc.  Maybe this is why the Bible tells us to first take the speck out of our own eyes.  A long time ago, a very wise man helped me understand that the only things I can control are my own attitudes and behaviors.  Consequently, I don’t care much about nor pay much attention to what the dominant culture says or thinks about me (although I will admit to being pissed off when I can’t be scruffy on a Saturday and go into a department store without being followed around; I’ve finally learned to use that to my advantage, though – now I just hover around the register and amaze people at how quickly I get serviced!). 

But it seems that the dominant culture, the media, the talking heads du jour – whomever one chooses to name – it seems there is this inclination to point to these people in their grief, who are responding to spiritual savagery visited upon them by invoking the spiritual principles that have always undergirded them – it seems there is an inclination to point to these particular people in this particular situation and say “See, Black folk, THAT’S how you ought to respond when people visit atrocities upon you.”

And that thought, of course, is complete bullshit.  Remember above when I said the only things I can control are my attitudes and my behaviors?  That’s true.  It’s true for me,  it’s true for you, and it's true for every member of the dominant culture.  It’s just not appropriate and it doesn’t work for someone to point to anyone else and tell them how to forgive.  Forgiveness is noble and laudable, that is true.  But one cannot morally speak to people of color or any oppressed people about the moral superiority of forgiveness without acknowledging the systems created that caused many among them to have a  predilection towards and nearly superhuman capacity for, forgiveness. And one certainly can’t speak to oppressed people in America about the virtue of forgiveness without also speaking about the virtues of freedom, justice, and equality.  You cannot morally speak to me about my need to forgive without first addressing your need to let justice roll down like a river or righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.   

As I said, I’m not responsible for your attitudes or your behaviors.  Thankfully, I’m not in a place where I have to forgive people who massacred my loved ones.  But I do know that as long as you have a log of systemic racism, or a tree trunk of inequality in your eyes, and as long as you live in a forest of privilege-fueled oppression – as long as those conditions exist, they morally disqualify you from speaking about the speck of violence that occurs in my community after other atrocities are visited upon it.  And if you still choose to speak, know that I will neither listen nor be able to hear you.  The logs in your eyes and the forest you live in will render your words as but noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.

And yes, for that and other transgressions,  you will still be forgiven.  You’ll be forgiven because in order to live in the hellish environment you’ve created, all I could do was to take on the mantle of Christ and His teachings.  I have to forgive, no matter for what, and no matter how many times.  I do that for my own wellbeing, not for yours.  I forgive you because I’m responsible for my attitudes and my behaviors, and forgiveness is what I know, believe, and have been taught is right.

That's my attitude and prayerfully that will be my behavior.  But what about you?

Grace, Hatred, and Racism

Reared in a Methodist tradition, I believe that God’s Grace is available to everyone.  God’s Prevenient Grace is all around us and available to anyone who will have it. It is a gift from God, readily available, and has absolutely nothing to do with us. As we accept that Gift of Grace,  God’s Justifying Grace begins to work on us, bringing us in line with God’s Divine Will for us, making us completely new creatures within the Will of God.   God’s Sanctifying Grace then continues to change us and empower us to walk more closely in the Will of God.

Grace is always there; the question is whether or not we will latch on to it and if we do, whether we will surrender ourselves to it so it can change us.

As I listen to the news reports being spun to paint a homegrown terrorist as some sort of victim, and as I watch the majority of my white friends remain painfully silent on this massacre, this racially charged American act of terrorism against Americans of African descent -- as I listen, it occurs to me that grace, hatred and racism share some characteristics.  In the American spirit, psyche, and ethos,  all abound, and all are available to anyone who will latch on to them.  Once we reach out and grab onto them, whether we grab on to Grace, hatred, or racism, -- whatever we grab onto begins to work on us.  Grace will begin to bring us in line with God’s Divine Will for us, hatred will bring us in line with scorn and disdain for things not pleasing to us, and racism will bring us in line with an ideology that people who share some of our genetic characteristics are somehow superior to other humans.  As we continue on, whether walking in Grace, in hatred, or in racism, we begin to change and to conform to its power over us – Sanctifying Grace will empower us to walk in the will of God, while Horrifying Hatred or Reprehensible Racism will distort and deform one’s human nature to fit the will of the demonic forces in which they have their genesis.

Let's be clear.  This terrorist is not a victim.  The nine saints who welcomed him into Bible study and were killed because of their kindness -- those are the only victims.  At the end of the day, the homegrown terrorist had a choice.  He CHOSE to embrace hatred and racism, he CHOSE the resulting deformity of spirit, and he CHOSE to act from that distorted and deformed place, rather than to seek wholeness.  At the end of the day, the young white terrorist lived in an environment where hatred and racism freely abound.  He lived in an environment where the “confederate flag” is still flown, and where a legacy of enslaving human beings is somehow conflated with and glorified as history.  Again, as a point of clarity, what's being highlighted is a history of slavery and abuse, and there's nothing to be glorified about that.   While there may be some valid discussion over the original intent of this flag, the reality remains that “The Stars and Bars,” in whatever its present iteration may be, has always been a symbol of the pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist, secessionist, Confederate States of America.  In the debate over what the flag in SC means and whether the state of South Carolina has the right to fly it, no one mentions the fact that “The Stars and Bars” experienced a resurgence in popularity during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and became an unofficial emblem of the segregationist movement.  FOR THAT REASON ALONE, the State of South Carolina needs to take the first step and remove the flag from its official buildings. This would be a show of respect to its African American citizens murdered by a terrorist bent on starting a race war, and it would, I believe, send a message that the atmosphere of hatred and racism is no longer to be tolerated.

Like Grace, Hatred and Racism have no intrinsic physical form. You can see their effects, you can sense their presence, but you can’t reach out and touch them.  This may be why those who are not people of color often believe that “too much is made of the race issue,” or think it’s nonexistent because “we have a black President.”

Which is sort of like saying “I prayed to Jesus last year, and I was really sincere.  So today I’m gonna give my son a gun to kill your mother, but it’s ok, because I prayed last year.”  God’s Grace is given to the humble, and is shown to be sufficient for us when it is made perfect in weakness.  It’s a gift from God, clearly not something to be claimed or appropriated by humans.  It’s not something with or about which we can boast; it is, if you will, an inside job.  But Hatred and Racism – these are humanly (or demonically) sourced qualities, and they will flourish where they are neither destroyed nor, at the very least, corrected.  They, like sin and all things with an evil genesis, must be resisted – they are things for which we must always be on guard.

And we’re not anymore. We’ve grown complacent, we’ve fallen asleep, and just like those dear people innocently let a madman into their midst, we have allowed hatred and racism to come sit and sup with us.  We may not recognize them, or we may think they look a little off but be reluctant to say anything about them.  But we have to learn, folks.  We have to learn that injustice anywhere is still a threat to justice everywhere. We have to believe Jesus was sincere when He said that whatever we did to the least of these, we did to Him. 

So what’s it gonna be?  Are we going to choose to be filled with God's grace, quietly but resolutely empowered to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God?  Can we see "the least of these" not only as poor people in far off lands, but as those who are marginalized and abused by our very own political and social systems?  Or are we going to succumb to the cancer of hatred and the lie of racism?  Are we willing to expose and eradicate the latter two so the former might grow within us?

Or are we just gonna lay low and act like none of this has any meaning?  They’re all there:  Grace, Hatred, and Racism, and they all have the power to make us and mold us and change us into something new.  Like the terrorist who murdered the Emmanuel 9, we get to choose what we grasp and hold onto.

Nah, it's Not Just Mental Illness

This morning I stopped in a convenience store.  A man was seated there,  his deep chocolate skin accentuated by an accumulation of street dust and dirt.  He was disheveled, apparently both homeless and mentally ill.  For a moment I wondered what Jesus would do in NYC, how He would deal with the scores and scores of people in need.  I focused on Jesus the man, forgetting that the Divine person of Jesus could and probably would choose to restore them to wholeness.

My thoughts were interrupted by the shouts of the store manager yelling at the man to leave and threatening to call the police.  True, that is his right, but the guy, though dirty and half-dressed, wasn’t smelly, the store wasn’t crowded, and he wasn’t disruptive like the entitled white guy who was in there arguing the day before.  This brother was just trying to sit down in the cool for a minute.

I was left wondering why mental illness is used as an explanation/quasi defense when considering someone who commits an act of premeditated terrorism with the goal of starting a race war, but why that same condition of mental illness is completely ignored when considering someone who simply needs help to survive. 

Seems like there’s more than mental illness going on here.

Praying Because I Still Have Hope

The murders of nine Black people at Bible study is heartbreaking and horrific. Sadly, it’s not the worst part of the story.

As the news broke, a NYC businessman announced his run for the Presidency of the United States.  He did so while showing an embarrassing dearth of knowledge regarding international trade.  Instead of bothering to educate himself, his platform appeared to be based on xenophobia and character assassination, referring to “people with accents” answering call lines, and calling US Government officials “weak” and “stupid.”   In the week or so leading up to the murders, we saw the Twitterverse explode over some woman who appeared confused (or deliberately deceptive) about her racial identity; we saw a popular US vacation destination begin the systematic deportation and denial of rights of people who “look like” they are of African descent, we saw some people in an uproar over a person who decided they were in an inappropriately gendered body, and we saw, over and over again, attacks upon people of color – for being in swimming pools, for shopping, and for any number of real or imagined offenses. 

Like many (of my friends of color, anyway), I’m heartbroken over what I see.  I’m no longer looking at the violence of the acts; living in a city where a man killed his girlfriend and made her into soup which he then served to the homeless has shown me that human depravity and its accompanying physical violence can sink to unimaginable depths.  What concerns me more than the physical violence is the psychic and spiritual violence we continuously wreak upon each other and upon the world.  That, IMHO, is an even worse part of the story.

They say charity starts at home, so I’mma go there first.  We Americans are incredibly self-absorbed.  Get a group of us together and chances are you’ll find us sitting and peering down into our electronic devices rather than interacting with each other.  If we do find someone we like, the first thing we do is trade email addresses or figure out how to facebook each other.  Our norm for social interaction seems to have shifted from the personal to the electronic.  The unfortunate byproduct of this phenomenon is that, as Americans, we always want to do more.  We have access to more people and more information and so we go for quantity over quality.  In the process, it seems our intellectual capacities for critical thinking and our spiritual capacities for discernment have been significantly diminished.  Take any preposterous assertion, put it on the internet, and within 24 hours, someone will be running around repeating it as if it’s real.  Use popular music to create an image of African Americans as drug-using, gun-toting thugs, and abandon all empirical evidence to the contrary, and an alarming number of people become willing to believe it's real.  Religion is too hard or doesn’t make sense?  Don’t try to understand it; don’t try to change or grow spiritually – no.  Just abandon religion, make up your own, or simply embrace your spirituality, without ever bothering to check it or yourself or even to consider that maybe, just maybe, there is something outside the box you see.  

I’m rambling now because not only am I heartbroken, I’m incredibly pissed off.  The point I'm trying to make is that psychic violence is the result of our collective self-obsession to the exclusion of all else.  We sit back and celebrate this quasi-hedonistic culture we’ve created, then feign – surprise? Dismay? Disapproval? when someone selfishly takes it to a level we'd never imagined.  But isn't that the natural product of our culture?  Bigger, Better, More? 

If we have created  a culture in which people are not able to think critically, a culture in which people have neither spiritual discernment nor spiritual grounding, a culture in which the ultimate arbiter is not “how does this impact our world,” but “how does this make me feel?” then WHY are we surprised that some loser redneck decides to murder the black people they see as the source of their problems??  Have we not seen harbingers of this with the lunatic burning Qu’rans in Florida, the knuckleheads praying for the death of our President (and more recently, of Caitlyn Jenner) in Arizona?  When there is no public outcry over shootings of Sikhs at their temples, when we don't shut down the bikers who blasphemed Muslims at their temple on their Sabbath day, when we pay more attention to the color of a dress than we do to the fact that a popular vacation spot has begun to "ethnically cleanse" its country based on the colors of people's skin -- if we are overwhelmingly silent on those matters, then why are we now surprised that yet another crazy white terrorist has taken it upon themselves to eradicate the people of color he perceives as the source of his problems? This is how culture generates psychic, spiritual, and then physical violence.

We have SO much potential.  We humans are very diverse, and that can be quite beautiful.  Even though we have natural tendencies to group ourselves along real or imagined lines of demarcation, I believe human nature is to cooperate with and celebrate one another.  But somewhere along the way, we’ve learned to make enemies.  We’ve learned to assign values to physical characteristics, and to judge and group each other according to those values.  We’ve created so many gods that we’re unwilling or unable to recognize the Universal Divine God dwelling in all of us.

My prayer now is that we might begin to celebrate the God in all of us.  My prayer is that those of us who are people of faith will continue to pray to the God of our understanding, a God Who will allow our hearts, minds, and spirits to be opened to God’s Divine Presence.  It’s only within God’s Divine Presence that we can begin to heal our wounds, to respect our differences, and to truly love one another.   I pray that God's Divine Presence will comfort those who mourn, will calm those who are angered, and will heal those who are wounded in body, mind, and spirit.  I pray because recent events reveal the brutal reality that when we fail to turn back to God, our course leads to destruction.  There’s no other way, at least that I can see.  We’re too diverse, we have too many competing agendas – we can’t rank them or decide one is better than another; we have to learn to coexist lovingly and peacefully.

Despite all I see around me, despite recent events, I still have hope.  As long as Jesus is Alive, I will have hope.  While I’m Christian, I recognize that many people are not.  I also recognize that, since the beginning of time,  every major grouping of humans has had some form of the Golden Rule, some principle that says, as Jesus did, that we should love and treat our neighbors as we’d want to be treated.  My prayer is that we could all begin to come together on that one point, and then to lift up the good in one another.  Is that going to solve our problems?  No, of course not.  But it might begin to calm us down to a point where we can begin to work together towards preserving our planet and our human race.

If I were a better or more profound writer, or it my emotions were not engaged, I’d wrap this up with some memorable ending, but that ain’t in me right now.  I'm heartbroken, but I still have hope.  Right now, though,  all I can do is pray we will learn to live and act in love for one another.  Our lives and our planet depend on it.

Hold On Just a Little While Longer, Everything's Gonna Be Alright!!

Hold on Just a Little While Longer.  Everything is Gonna be Alright!!!

If I shut up and turn my brain off for long enough, I can hear God confirming those words to me.  Problem is, I seldom shut up and turn my brain off for long enough.   My day job is executive director of a nonprofit.  It’s in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, and we serve people who have a fairly tenuous grip on that social safety net.  While initially the position of “executive director” was a good boost to my ego (though, sadly,  not to my pocketbook.  Did I mention that this is a nonprofit?), the reality is that this role has driven me to my knees and increased my faith in more ways than I ever thought possible.  It often seems the organization is held together with nothing but dental floss, duct tape, and effectual, fervent prayer.  So I’m often busy petitioning God or, like this morning, thanking God and singing God’s praises.  But I don’t spend nearly enough time shutting up, turning my brain off, and listening to and for God.

So there I was celebrating this morning – yesterday I was talking about how I have to get through my audits so I can move towards mission-oriented development; this morning I hear the auditor may FINALLY be able to start writing his report.  Then I turned the corner and ran into someone who has a similar mission and complementary resources who wants to do some development. My response was to Thank God and sing God’s praises, not to shut up and listen to God.

Today, like most days, was an endless flurry of regulatory compliance, personnel issues, simultaneous community relations/drug interventions/building inspections, and fiscal oversight.  All this is laid atop a plate of capacity building, board development, and organizational mission/vision work. And all of THAT, of course, was interspersed with today’s internet banality, which seems to have shifted from the person born male who’s decided to live out her identity as a female to the person born white who’s decided to live out her identity as a black person.  None of which has any relevance to or bearing upon my present situation nor to that of my clients or employees.   As a very practical guide,  I need to be able to pay bills for 30 days and see payroll for two pay periods in the future, and that wasn’t the case today.  In the midst of deciding where to slice and dice, and whether to hold off on paying insurance or security, I stopped and realized the Ram in the Bush. I didn’t listen for the voice of God, but once I decided to hold on a little while longer, it became apparent that everything was, indeed, gonna be alright.

That would have been enough, but I was sitting at my desk, working on some APRs and accepting the fact that I wasn’t going to make my evening exercise class.  My exercise classes are my "me" time, and I don't usually miss them except to attend the professional ball games for which I have season tickets.  Working out gets rid of my stress, then the swim afterwards relaxes and isolates (or insulates!) me.  My exercise times are an integral part of my day, and I hate to miss them.  So as I'm sitting here realizing I'm going to miss tonight's class, I get a text from a friend.  He’s an old college bud, someone with whom I often share dinners and holidays.  Earlier this week I was thinking of him and how we needed to touch base, but did nothing more than think on it.

So he texted me this evening.  Yes, of course it’s time for us to get together, but sometimes we go several months without seeing each other and sometimes we see each other every weekend.  I don’t believe it’s coincidence that he texted me just as I thought about him, I took that text as another sign from God that "yes, Babygirl, you CAN do this. You can do this because I've got you."  This time I’m listening.  I think I may go home and turn my brain off, continuing to listen.  I have certainly heard God say  “Hold on just a little while longer.  Everything’s gonna be alright!!!”